February 14, 2022 01:02 PM UTC

Liked Pat Neville? You'll LOVE Billy Jack

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• by: Colorado Pols

As readers may know, among the many eras in Colorado politics set to end with the 2022 elections is that of the Neville Clan holding office–and at one time vying for total control–of the Colorado Republican Party, leading figures in a cabal allied with Rocky Mountain Gun Owners and a sprinkling of fringe religious groups like infamous Pastor Steve Grant of Greeley’s Destiny Christian Center.

Although former House Minority Leader Patrick Neville is termed out of office next January, the no-apologies toxic-by-design politics Neville once embraced controversially have become the normal state of play for today’s Republican Party–to the extent that Neville doesn’t even stand out like he once did. With that said, in Pat Neville’s hand-picked successor, we have a replacement promising to take the debate in the legislature to foul new lows that could make even Gordon “Dr. Chaps” Klingenschmitt blush:

Bill Jack has loved living in Castle Rock for nearly 25 years. He is an educator, biblical worldview trainer, dad, and grandfather.

With ten years of experience in public schools and 14 years with The Caleb Campaign, a biblically-based youth ministry, Bill has a passion for training people in a biblical view of government, law, and liberty. Bill is a co-founder of Worldview Academy, a Christian leadership training program for students, and also serves on the board of TeenPact, a biblically-based leadership training program in government and the political process for students…

How does Bill Jack live out his “passion for training people in a biblical view of government,” you ask? Owning those libs, of course! As Mother Jones reported in 2018 during the war over gay cake-baking that climaxed (for now) with the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission Supreme Court decision:

In 2014, a man named William Jack paid a visit to Azucar Bakery in Denver. There, Jack demanded two cakes, both in the shape of an open Bible. On one, he wanted “Homosexuality is a detestable sin – Leviticus 18:22” written on one side of the Bible and “God hates sin Psalm 45:7” on the other. On the second cake, he asked the bakery to inscribe “God loves sinners” and “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Romans 5:8” and to include an iced illustration of two men holding hands in front of a cross, covered with what Jack described as a “Ghostbusters symbol,” a red circle with a line through it to indicate that such unions are “un-Biblical.”

Bill Jack’s lame attempt to conflate his right to hate with a business’s right to not participate in hate, which (once again for the record) is not morally equivalent to protecting people from discrimination in public accommodation, was nonetheless enough for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch to cite in his opinion against the Colorado Civil Rights Commission in the Masterpeice Cakeshop case. That made William Jack something of a star along with Colorado’s original anti-gay cakeman Jack Phillips.

But be assured, via Right Wing Watch, Jack’s Bible-thumping agenda doesn’t stop there:

On his radio program today, extremist anti-LGBTQ pastor Kevin Swanson and his co-host Bill Jack declared that “sexualized public schools that violate God’s law with high levels of flagrancy” should be burned to the ground…

Swanson and Jack agreed that if parents from the 1950s saw what was happening in the schools today, “they would want to burn them down.”

“They would burn them down,” Jack said. “They would tear the bricks out of the walls, they would use the bricks to stone the apostates.” [Pols emphasis]

Plenty of responses come to mind, least of all being that schools cost money so let’s not burn them down? That’s just one of many good reasons we can think of for neither burning schools nor stoning “apostates” (whoever they are) with the bricks from schools. Negative effects to be avoided from clearly swearing off this policy include children not being in school and/or dying either in fires or impact with the business end of a brick.

Once again, if it’s necessary to explain something this basic, please don’t run for office.

Too late again, we guess.